I thought it was about time I wrote a short update on how things are going with Seeking Perfection, assuming anyone is interested in that sort of thing. I also wanted to address The Bacon Situation.

The first draft

As I’ve been tweeting and Facebooking recently, I’m currently writing the first draft of the book, taking hundreds of hours of interviews and trying to condense them into something that makes sense.

Not that the people I spoke to didn’t make sense, it’s just that sometimes there are conflicting memories of who exactly said or did what, or else there’s a reference to a story that was told in another chapter that might work better elsewhere…I know, I’m already getting boring. The point is that the book is now underway, something that seemed impossible just over a year ago when I decided to try and get this project off the ground.

Back then, I knew I wanted to read more about the Tremors films but couldn’t find much out there. Dedicated Tremors fans can trawl the internet and DVD extras for snippets of stories, but there isn’t much out there from the lady who had to oversee the transportation of the Graboids from LA to Lone Pine on the first film, the guy who played Señor Ortega in Tremors 2 or a writer of an unmade script from Tremors: The Series. If I was able to track any of them down, would any of them want to talk to a fan in the UK via Skype?

Bizarrely, the answer is yes and I now have interviews with all of the above, and many more. In fact new interviews are happening all the time – just last night a director from Tremors: The Series emailed me some responses – meaning this book will either never be finished, or draft one will be longer than War and Peace.

The Bacon Situation

One thing, or rather person, I should probably address here is Kevin Bacon, the man most people associate with the Tremors franchise. Unsurprisingly, the most asked question I’ve had about the book is: “Have you interviewed Kevin Bacon?”.

The answer to that is “Not yet”.

Mr Bacon has an interesting history with Tremors. While he did his job professionally, was fantastic in the film and everybody I’ve spoken to has high praise for him, it seems he wasn’t always happy to be remembered for being in a film where the giant worms were the main feature.

In recent years I think he’s mellowed towards the film and its legacy, referencing his role in TV ads and suchlike, but I’ve yet to hear him speak in detail about the film. I’ve approached his representatives via email and telephone and I’ve sent a few tweets in his direction, but so far I’ve not had a response. If you’re on Twitter, or you happen to know Mr Bacon, please feel free to mention that you’d like to read about his work on the film in Seeking Perfection. I’ll keep trying him as well.

(The same goes for Fred Ward, but it seems he rarely does interviews, unlike his co-star).

Next steps

Over the next month or so I’ll be working on completing the first draft. Then I start the second. I’ll publish more interview updates here over the next few months, hopefully one or two a week.

As for publishing the book, talks are taking place about how it will appear in print and as an e-book at the end of 2014. I can’t say much just now, but I’ll blog more soon.

In the meantime, feel free to ask questions about the book and I’ll answer them in the comments section.